A Short look at Cairns History

As we drive our streets of Cairns, give a second of thought of how these roads came into existence and of the people who made them.

In the Aeroglen area, dairying and attempts at farming both there and the other side of the Barron River, required easier access to the town proper, and local governance was faced with the requirement to overcome the worst possible weather conditions, eternally aggravated by the monsoon rains of January to March.

The Smithfield road was built in May 1877, and the conditions were described by one of the construction workers, Mark Bennett, about the short stretch from Saltwater Creek to the Barron.”. oxen were so incredibly bogged they had to be shot, and the logs for the corduroy(logs laid across quaggy crossings) sank out of sight as soon as they were laid.”

At one point there was talk of raising the level of the town at some point near Minne and Sheridan Sts, due to the monsoon problem.

This mined metal was prone to excessive dust and the fear of fire from the dust, meant that the Council decided to drill wells every 3 miles in Abbott St to damp the ardour of the dust.. Ipso facto, By 1942 the only”metalled” roads were the inner streets of Abbott to Aplin and the Edge Hill and Mulgrave roads.

Soon the hillside at Aeroglen was quarried and the rock used for a permanent road. It might well be, The first stone for metalling the Cairns streets came from this pit.

Sherimoore St. Was named after Brinsley Guise Sherimoore, the Bible Museum owner at Cooktown(1871-1879) who had been instructed to sail to Trinity Bay and inspect the harbour reported on by Dalrymple.